1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to gas meters.
The present invention, more particularly, relates to mechanical mechanisms for connecting gas meters to encoder remote transmitters (ERT).
2. Prior Developments
Historically, gas meters for fuel gas are equipped with readout dials, whereby an employee of the gas company is enabled to read the dial for billing purposes. Under conventional practice the gas company employee has to physically travel into the building to the area where the meter is installed in order to take a reading of the gas usage.
More recently encoder remote transmitters (ERT's) have been developed for electrically transmitting the meter reading to receivers located remote from the gas meter. When such a transmitter is installed on a gas meter the gas company employee can drive a van along the street and operate a receiver in the van to receive and record gas usage information broadcast by the transmitter. The process of obtaining the gas usage information is thereby accelerated, since the gas company employee does not have to leave the van and walk into the building in order to take a meter reading.
One known encoder remote transmitter for gas meters is manufactured by the Enscan Company. Unfortunately the encoder remote transmitter marketed by Enscan is designed for installation on only one specific fuel gas meter manufactured by the American Singer Gas Meter Company.
The present invention is directed to a relatively inexpensive adapter for enabling the Enscan transmitter to be used with any commercially available fuel gas meter. The adapter is designed to obviate the need for multiple encoder remote transmitter models mated to different specific gas meters.